


counting saints

by dracolaufeyson



Category: Six of Crows Series - Leigh Bardugo, The Grisha Trilogy - Leigh Bardugo
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, BAMF Inej Ghafa, Domestic Jesper Fahey/Wylan Van Eck, F/M, Flirty Jesper Fahey, Hurt Kaz Brekker, M/M, Minor Jesper Fahey/Wylan Van Eck, One Shot, POV Kaz Brekker, POV Third Person Omniscient, Post-Book 2: Crooked Kingdom, Teen Angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-19
Updated: 2020-05-19
Packaged: 2021-03-03 00:21:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,320
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24265789
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dracolaufeyson/pseuds/dracolaufeyson
Summary: Kaz has a hard time sleeping without Inej.So, every night, he counts her Saints.
Relationships: Jesper Fahey/Wylan Van Eck, Kaz Brekker/Inej Ghafa, Kaz Brekker/Jesper Fahey
Comments: 11
Kudos: 118





	counting saints

_Santkt Petyr. Sankta Alina. Sankta Anastasia. Sankta Marya. Sankta Lizabeta. Sankt Vladimir._

_Sankt Petyr. Her first knife. A gift from Kaz. Strapped to her right forearm. Quick release. Saint of equilibrium. Of rationale. Petyr, derived from the word “stone”. Something to fall back on. Saint of reassurance. Saint of the unchanging. Of sunsets and sunrises and death and life. Balance._ _Consistency._ _“For dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.”_

She sailed in on a Monday. She always did. 

Mondays at the Crow Club were slow, so by the time her ship had reached the harbor and the sun had disappeared beneath the horizon, Kaz had already retired to his room, lying flat on top of a neatly made bed.

But not sleeping. Never without her. 

He had left the window open—an invitation of sorts—and smells from the Barrel drifted in as he lay there waiting for her. Autumn in the Barrel smelled like any other season in the Barrel, but he liked how crisp the air felt, how crunchy leaves sounded beneath gentle footsteps.

Some nights, he almost swore he could hear her coming.

Every crow that landed on the rooftop outside, every drop of rain on the windowsill, every surge of wind that tossed around pebbles on the cobblestone streets below: her. They were all her. Every creak in the floorboards, every soft gust of wind that disrupted the specks of dust sleeping on his nightstand sounded as if she herself was whispering her name in his ear, felt as if her dainty fingertips were dancing across his spine like a ballerina. Like a spider. 

On Mondays, she was in everything, but on Tuesdays, she was his morning coffee, bittersweet and heavy on his tongue, unable to get out of his bed without a taste. On Wednesdays, she was the deck of cards flying through his gloved fingers at a blackjack table in the Crow Club, wincing as he dealt, haunted by the thought of her in another man’s hands. On Thursdays, she was the dice Jasper tossed in a game of table craps, never showing the same face twice, uncertain of where she would land. On Fridays, she was the slow jazz that wafted down the street from the West Stave, trying its best to escape the world it came from, but never getting farther than Kaz Brekker. On Saturdays, she was that damned feeling of laziness, the groan that escaped his lips as the sun shone through the curtains, his body aching to spend just one more minute in bed with her. And on Sundays, she was the fleeting sun, sinking beneath the horizon while all Kaz could do was watch, regretting the moment that he had let her go. 

He saw her in everything, but he never heard her coming. So, each Monday night he lay facing what was left of a broken mirror, a few shards of glass held together by an ancient gold frame, waiting for her silhouette to tumble through his window. Waiting for the day it did not.

It was never a question of her loyalty to the Barrel. The Barrel was where she had hired most of her crew members, it’s where she could get the cheapest fuel prices, where she could order a plate of the waffles that she had missed so much when she was gone. And whether or not Inej was comfortable admitting it to herself, the Barrel was her home. Kaz knew that Inej would always return to the Barrel, which only left one question remaining, heavy in the air: could Inej return to the Barrel without returning to Kaz?

He wasn’t a fool; he knew there was a Barrel without him, a world without Kaz Brekker, without Dirtyhands, and he knew that Inej knew it well. She had lived in that Barrel for over two years, and while he was sure her memories were not fond, he wondered if the knowledge of its existence was comfort enough. Wondered if one day, she would finally be able to sail into Fifth Harbor without thinking of the boy who had given her the boat. If she would finally be able to step onto the streets of the East Stave without her eyes wandering west, searching for the the old building that towered slightly over all the others, focused on the highest floor with a view of the bay and a boy glowering in the windowsill.

And if today was not that day, then when?

His favorite moment of every night was right then, comforted by the familiar feeling of adrenaline rushing through his veins. As his heartbeat pounded in his ears, sweaty palms clenched, he savored the questionable impending doom, like the sight of a hangman in the near distance—close enough to tell he held a noose but too far to decipher who it was for. Kaz was a sick bastard, or so he told himself, so he enjoyed those suffocating minutes alone with his crippling thoughts, torturing himself with that one question, wondering if the boy who had survived Pekka Rollins, Jan van Eck, and the entire fucking Fjerdan military would finally be bested by a Suli girl and his own heart. 

_And what a fucking legacy that would be_ , Kaz mused. 

So he laid there, a frigid body on top of frigid sheets in a frigid land, hoping that if she chose to stay in that other world, a world without Kaz Brekker, she’d have the decency to bring him along with her. 

And even when her reflection finally appeared in his mirror, the steel of her knives glinting in the broken glass, Kaz still did not know what her decision would be. So, he made it for her. Whether it was because he was impatient or because he feared what she would choose if left to her own devices, he did not care to know. 

“Come in.” For a moment, as she crouched silently on his windowsill, teetering between two worlds, he wondered if she had come just to give him the bird and then sail off again. He had it coming.

But in the end, like always, she came back to him. 

His Ghafa.

His spider. 

His Wraith. 

His _Inej,_ sailing through his window like an angel of the night. 

_Santkt Petyr. Sankta Alina. Sankta Anastasia. Sankta Marya. Sankta Lizabeta. Sankt Vladimir._

_Sankta Alina. Strapped to her left forearm, opposite of Sankt Petyr. Quick release. Bone handle. Saint of light. Saint of good where goodness is seldom found, of brightness where brightness is seldom seen. Of hope where hope has almost run out._

She still hadn’t said a word when Kaz felt the mattress shift beneath her weight, somehow managing to lay down without invoking the creaky wrath of his ancient bedframe. 

“You really should keep that thing shut. Next time, someone a lot scarier than me might hop through.” 

“No one’s scarier than you, Ghafa.” They made eye contact in the mirror shards hanging on the wall and Kaz examined her muddy reflection. He scanned her face for new scars, her slender frame for signs of malnutrition, examining every part of her body that was visible to him in the mirror except for her eyes, afraid of what he would find there. Inej, always tightly strung like the high wires she scaled, seemed stiffer than usual. Analyzing his movements, his words, his mannerisms, studying a face she knew better than her own for any signs of unpleasantness. Deciding which Kaz Brekker she had the pleasure of spending the night with.

Even Kaz himself did not know yet.

He felt her eyes drawn to his hands, bound by the leather of his gloves. This was not unusual—since the day on the dock Inej had only seen his bare fingers a handful of times—but she noticed that he wore the same pair that he had the last time she’d seen him. Meaning worn finger pads. Loose stitching. Millimeters of material between his skin and the men he shook hands with, hot sweat from their palms seeping in through the seams. Meaning that when she reached out to tap her fingers on the back of his hand, he could almost feel her soft skin, dry and cracked from the salty sea air, fingers lingering a moment longer than necessary, long enough to feel his racing heartbeat just beneath the surface of his skin.

“New gloves?” Of course, she knew the answer.

“No.” He watched a soft smile play across her lips in the reflection of the mirror, and he wanted to ask her to do it again, but by the time the words had risen in the back of his throat he had decided it was ill-mannered to ask someone to smile when you hadn’t given them anything to smile about.

He didn’t ask how the boat was, or how the crew was fairing. She didn’t ask after Wylan or Jesper, or the Crow Club’s earnings. They each had their own ways of knowing these things. And Kaz always made sure that her spiders were well informed. Never taking a chance. Always wanting to know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that every time she slipped through that window she was coming for him. Nothing else.

So they just lay there. No questions. No answers. Releasing a breath neither one of them knew they were holding, the sleepless nights and demanding day jobs finally catching up to them.

Some Monday nights, the good ones, made Kaz feel like he was sixteen again. Like he was on top of the world. Like it was three in the morning and he and Inej were the only ones left in the lobby of the Crow Club and Inej surely wished she could sneak off to bed, but Kaz just couldn’t stop talking, couldn’t stop scheming, couldn’t stop asking questions he already knew the answers to just so that he could see her face light up, listen to the excitement trembling in her voice as she interrupted him. Plotting missions he knew had holes just so that she could find them, so he could sit there and watch the gears turn, watch her chew pens and tap her restless fingers on her knees until she came up with a solution, which, in the end, was usually better than his own. 

And he would go on like that for hours, discussing business operations and gang politics, jumping from one thing to another without a breath in between, things much better digested over a plate of pancakes by people who had slept at all in the past forty-eight hours. Kaz would go on like that for hours, days, weeks, months, years, on the off chance that the next thing that slipped out of his mouth was what he really wanted to say.

The two of them, staying up all night talking about all the things that didn’t matter because neither of them knew how to talk about the things that did.

Some Monday nights felt like that. But they weren’t all good.

Other Monday nights, the bad ones, made Kaz feel like he was nine again. Like he had just left his brother’s waxy body floating in Hanraat Bay among reeds and dead fish after using him as a makeshift life raft. On these Monday nights, he remembered so clearly what it felt like to know nothing but anger. To be cold and small and alone. To wander the streets of the Barrel at midday when the shops were all filled to the brim with enthusiastic customers, passing around filthy coins like they were pints of Kvas, brushing each other’s shoulders as they squeezed through alleys and aisles, no regard to cleanliness or safety, no regard to personal space. On these Monday nights, Inej was like the unsupervised children that ran up and down the waterfront, wiping their snotty noses on their sleeves, poking washed up fish with short sticks, vessels for dirt, vessels for sickness, vessels for his grief. Someone to blame. He knew beating the shit out of some grimy kid wouldn’t make him feel better. He knew picking a fight with Inej wouldn’t make him feel better. But he did it because sometimes they fought back.

But sometimes they didn’t. Sometimes the kids would just lie there, silently sobbing, twitching on the ground like a half-dead chicken. Lying there, emotionless on his bed as he hounded her about things that weren’t her fault, mistakes that she did not make. Eyes closed so that they couldn’t see the next hit coming. Eyes wide open but never looking, refusing to give him the satisfaction of eye contact.

Some Monday nights felt like that. Like he had spent his weeks and months away from her studying for a test that he failed on the first question, the minute he saw her.

_“How long has she been gone?”_

_K_ _az knew that Wylan Van Eck did not have a malicious bone in his body, that every word that slipped out of his mouth was of pure intention, but in that moment Kaz could have scalped his friend with a fucking letter opener and not given it a second thought._

_“I’m not sure.” Ninety-seven days. “Maybe three months or so.”_

_“Don’t worry about it Kaz,” Jesper, timing as good as ever, stumbled into the room. “She’ll be back soon.”_

_Jesper’s signature goofy smile and nonchalant attitude only agitated Kaz more. “Saints, Jesper, if you were as good at playing house as you apparently are at predicting the fucking future maybe we wouldn’t have cut our gross profit in half last month.” Jesper’s cheeks reddened and Wylan, the most non-threatening boy Kaz had ever met in his life, looked ready to jump to the defense of his boyfriend. Kaz didn’t give him the chance. “In fact, you know what, forget working the Crow Club. Take up this clairvoyant shit full time and maybe the next time some rogue Black Tip executes two of our youngest members in broad daylight you’ll be able to let me know in advance.” Kaz knew that was unfair. But sometimes ensuring the pain of other people was the only way to know that he was not alone in his own._

_Jesper, the tips of his ears burning with shame and anger, balled up his fists, a string of curses on the tip of his tongue—_

_A hand fell on his shoulder. Small and bony and warm and gentle. “It’s not personal, Jez.” Wylan’s soft eyes shot a sympathetic glance at the fragmented boy slumped behind the mahogany desk, dark bags under his eyes and a twitch in his right knee. “Let it go.”_

_Kaz did not take well to sympathy. Or compassion. “For fuck’s sake, Merchling—”_

_“She’ll come back.” And with that, the golden-haired boy ushered Jesper out of the office without another word, leaving Kaz alone with his thoughts, the image of two mangled bodies seared to the inside of his eyelids._

_It wasn’t Jesper’s fault, or Wylan’s. There had been no ransom note, no indication that two fourteen-year olds staying out all night in the West Stave was anything but normal. No one could have seen it coming._

Except for her, _Kaz thought._

_It wasn’t that his new spiders were ungifted or slacking off, though even if that were the case, yelling at them for hours this morning hadn’t made Kaz feel any better. He did not blame them for being unable to fill the impossibly large shoes that had been left behind. The giant gaping hole that stood where she once did._

_The Dregs had needed her. They had needed her, and she wasn’t there. The boat wasn’t supposed to be an escape, a getaway. It was just a gift. She would sail for a couple weeks and then realize how much more useful, more appreciated she was back at home. She was supposed to come back._

_He thought she would come back._

_It was her fault, her fault for allowing Kaz and the rest of the gang to become accustomed to her talents, her abilities, avoiding practicing the skills that they had no need for because Inej would always be there. It was her fault for carving herself a place in his heart just to rip herself out the first chance she got. Her place was not at sea, restricted by water on all sides, slitting the throats of slavers and liberating their peoples. Her place was here. In the Barrel, at the Crow Club. She should have been here. She should have been here. She should have—_

_“Can I come in?” Kaz knew it was her. She never knocked. The sight of her startled him, one of the few things that could. She stood in the doorway, one foot in the hallway, the other already in his office. “Sorry, I went to your room first . . . but uh, you weren’t there.”_

_Kaz forced himself to look anywhere but her, wave after wave of guilt washing over him each time he felt relief at her presence._

_Two kids, dead._

_Now was not the time to examine every inch of her body, not the time to notice new scars or that the tail of her braid hung about three inches shorter than it had the last time he’d seen her. Now was not the time to notice that she no longer smelled of herbal tea and rusting iron, but instead of salty air and wet lumber. Not the time to notice what looked like a new sheath strapped to the inside of her right boot. Had it been a gift?_

_Two kids, dead._

_“Welcome back,” was all Kaz managed to say. Had she always favored her right leg?_

_Two kids, dead._

_“Thanks. It almost feels like I never left.”_

_Two kids, dead._

_“You did leave. Ninety-seven days ago.” At this, Inej looked directly at him, and Kaz searched her eyes for any sign of guilt or remorse. He found none._

_“I—I heard about Rez and Jamie. Kaz, I’m . . . I’m sorry. I’m really sorry. ” He didn’t want her to be sorry. He wanted her to regret ever leaving, he wanted her to promise that she would never do it again._

_“You should have been here.” Kaz didn’t realize he had said it aloud until he saw her jaw tighten. Was she ashamed? Good._

_“Come again?” No. She was angry._

_“You should have been here,” Kaz repeated, as if saying it louder made it any clearer. “You knew my spiders weren’t half as good as you. You knew where our weaknesses lied. You knew we were vulnerable. You should have been here.”_

_“That’s not my job, Kaz!” She must have seen the surprise flash across his face because her voice was softer when she spoke again. “That’s not my job, Kaz.”_

_“Of course it’s your job, Ghafa,” he pleaded. “You’re my spider, you’re my Wraith, that’s your_ name, _of course it’s your job—”_

_“Kaz. It’s not my job anymore . . . I left.”_

_His voice shook. “No.”_

_Kaz had made a mistake. Somewhere along the way he had made a mistake and or someone else had made one or maybe she had, maybe it was her fault, maybe she was the one who had fucked everything up. He did everything he was supposed to do. He loved her, so he let her go._

_She was supposed to come back._

_“Kaz,” she tried again, “I’m sorry about Rez and Jamie, I really am. But if I had been here and not on my ship, then what would’ve happened to the family in Os Kervo? Or the seven-year old girl in Ivets? Or—”_

_“So their lives were worth more than Rez and Jamie’s? So you’re suddenly this omnipotent power who gets to decide who lives and who dies?”_

_Inej had always had more patience for Kaz’s temper than most, but over time even the strongest iron could rust. “Kaz, you know that’s not what I’m saying.” Had he always been like this? Had he ever been this scared? The last time she’d seen him so completely devoid of anything but panic had been when she was bleeding out on a ship in the middle of the True Sea._

_When he spoke again, his voice was so small and unrecognizable that Inej questioned if she really knew the man standing in front of her anymore. If their time apart had left a gap between them too wide to safely cross. “You should have been here.”_

_The summer air was warm and sticky, but Inej shivered beneath her jacket. And she thought about falling._

_It happens a lot when you’re young, before you’ve really mastered your act. Kids fall from heights that they shouldn’t fall from; they break bones and they sprain ankles and sometimes they never walk a rope again. But it didn’t happen a lot to Inej. You could speculate that it was because talent flowed through her veins; her skill was coded in her DNA. Her father would tell you it was because she rarely walked with a net. But truthfully, Inej rarely fell because she knew that the best tightrope walkers never walked out onto the line. They jumped._

_She did not care how wide the gap was. She did not care if it was a five-hundred-foot fall or if a pack of ravenous wolves waited for her at the bottom. As long as Kaz Brekker stood on the other side, she would cross it every time._

_So she jumped._

_“I know you’re scared.” The anger that flared in his eyes would have been enough to deter anyone else, but Inej pressed on. “I know you’re scared and I know that this need you have to blame everyone else around you, to hold people accountable for what they did or didn’t do is burning inside of you and I know it’s because you feel responsible for Rez and Jamie and every other Dreg. And that’s good. That’s good, Kaz. Not only does it mean you’re a good leader, but it means you’re human. But Kaz, Kaz look at me—”_

_She stepped so closely to him that his gloved hands involuntarily withdrew to his pockets. His breath on her nose was warm and smelled of spearmint and black coffee. She willed her breath to steady, her pulse to slow, so that she could hear her own words over the racing of her heart._

_“But I didn’t see things other people couldn’t see. I didn’t scale buildings or hide places other people couldn’t. I just knew where to look. And so do you.”_

_“I can’t be my own spider, Ghafa.” His voice was hard and unforgiving, but Inej noticed the muscles in his neck and jaw relax, if only just a little._

_“I know. But sometimes you have to be.”_

_Kaz’s stomach dropped to the floor, and it was then that he realized Inej was not here to say. That maybe, never again would Inej be here to stay._

_She had almost made it to the other side, just meters away from the end of the line, when she fell._

_“You should have been here.” He had a lot of other words. He just didn’t know how to say them._

_Inej turned away from him to face the window, watching the reflection of a tear slide down her cheek. She muttered something, inaudible to Kaz._

_“If you have something to say to me then speak up.”_

_The speed at which she whipped around, her long braid slicing an arc through the air behind her, froze Kaz in the spot where he stood._

_“‘The steadast love of the Saint never ceases’.”_

_“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?” He regretted it almost as soon as he said it. Kaz did not have many boundaries, but he knew what Inej’s Saints meant to her and he respected that, whether they shared the devotion or not._

_“It means I’m leaving.”_

_Kaz had thought that was it. That the small glimpse he got of her slender body slinking out his bedroom window that night would be the last look he ever got of Inej Ghafa. And so, he learned to operate under that assumption._

_Until, five Mondays later, when he found her in his bed that night like nothing had ever happened._

_The next day, as he lay there unable to sleep, he began to count her Saints._

_Santkt Petyr. Sankta Alina. Sankta Anastasia. Sankta Marya. Sankta Lizabeta. Sankt Vladimir._

_Sankta Anastastia. Her longest knife, secured to the outside of her right thigh with a holster. The martyred saint. Persecuted for curing a plague that had killed thousands. The saint of resurrection and restoration. Of mercy. Anastasia came back to save those who had slaughtered her. “The steadfast love of the Saint never ceases”._

She always came back. Sometimes it took weeks, sometimes months. Sometimes each Monday for months on end she would show up in his bed and sometimes he wouldn’t hear from her for half a year.

But she always came back.

Next to her on the bed, Kaz’s right leg was falling asleep, but he was too content, too secure in this moment that he didn’t dare do anything to disturb it.

And some Monday nights, the great ones, felt like this. Quiet. Comfortable. Not like old times. Not like anything Kaz had ever known before. Words did not go unspoken, not because they were said aloud, but because neither Kaz or Inej felt like they could tell each other something the other did not already know. They had matured in their time apart, and as much as Inej wanted to hear those words and as much Kaz wanted to say them, it wasn’t necessary. They had known all along. For now, the only necessary thing was their breath. Proof of life. As long as they were living, an eternity was left for words and promises and hopes and dreams.

Kaz heard a small sigh cascade off of Inej’s lips, as the tension in her body released. He wasn’t there to pick a fight. He wasn’t there to pretend. He was just there to sleep.

To sleep through the night like he hadn’t in months, lullabied by her soft breathing, allowing every worry, every concern to float away out the window where a cool breeze forced the two beneath his sheets. His bed was warm like it hadn’t been in months, his heart racing like it hadn’t in months, his gloved fingers itching to touch like they hadn’t in years. And though Kaz didn’t think it possible, Inej too always slept her best on nights like these. Next to him.

He never touched her. She never pushed it.

That’s not to say he didn’t want to. That’s not to say he didn’t wish he could.

_Santkt Petyr. Sankta Alina. Sankta Anastasia. Sankta Marya. Sankta Lizabeta. Sankt Vladimir._

_Sankta Marya. Secured by a black garter on her left thigh. The virgin saint. Marya meaning pure, white. Saint of maidenhood. Saint of good girls and good boys, of virginity and innocence. Enemy of lust and passion. His least favorite saint, located in his favorite place._

Without Inej, he spent each night pretending to sleep, just so that he had an excuse to close his eyes and paint her image on the inside of his eyelids, on a canvas he was not afraid to touch. As long as he closed his eyes she crawled through that window every night, soundlessly making her way into his bed, her soft hands pressed against his chest, watching as beads of sweat trickled down his flushed cheeks and kissing them away before they reached his open mouth. Kaz did not mind that Inej took her time, he didn’t mind the empty seconds between each of her kisses, the way her lips landed on the corner of his mouth, just close enough that he could taste her. He could taste her. He could taste the salt of her skin, the sugar of her tongue, the honey dripping from her lips. The way his own name tasted in her mouth as she softly moaned into their kiss, the vibrations rattling his teeth.

_“Kaz … Kaz … Kaz …”_

But suddenly, the slow, tender kisses that were sufficient mere seconds ago would no longer suffice and he was pulling her beneath him, enamored by the way her hair fell across his pillow, the way her mouth opened at the touch of his fingertips, the way her back arched when his lips dipped below her collarbone, his tongue trailing between her breasts. And with his eyes closed he would map each curve of her body, each jut of her bones, becoming completely lost in her, in the way she moaned his name and tugged on his hair, the way her legs shook as she gasped for breath.

And maybe he would stay like that, head between her thighs, hands gripping her own for the rest of the night, or maybe she would pull his face back up to her own, never breaking eye contact as she fumbled the zipper on his slacks. The feeling was parallel to nothing, yet Kaz had felt it his whole life: the millisecond that his fist hung suspended in the air before it collided with its target, the uncomfortably quiet moments between Jasper’s entrance into a room and his first words, the smell of freshly made hazelnut waffles sitting on a plate in front of him before he took his first bite.

And the way his body hung suspended over her, waiting for reassurance, waiting for her to pull his ear down to her lips and tell him that she wanted this, that she’d wanted this forever and that she’d want this for always. And once she had, with his eyes closed, guided only by the warm breath cascading from her lips, her bony legs wrapped around his hips, her small hands pushing him inside of her, he would feel her. All of her. And he would not fear it.

She was more than just a dream, more than just a fantasy, she was the universe that he created, a girl living in a world where hands did not go unheld, lips did not go unkissed and bodies did not go unfucked. A world so far removed from the memory of floating corpses and blue lips and a boy named Jordie.

But as he lay next to the real Inej, silence strung between their lips, hands close but never touching, he was reminded which world they had the unfortunate luck of living in.

He watched the slow rise and fall of her chest and the fluttering of her eyelids. He watched the way that, when relaxed, her jaw tilted slightly towards the left, the small gap between her lips wider on one side. He watched the wind blow around stray hairs on her forehead that had fallen loose from her braid. Some of them were silver, at the roots, reflecting moonlight in the otherwise dark room. He watched the muscles in her left forearm spasm, while the ones in her right lay silently. He watched as with each breath, her head drifted closer to the edge of the pillow, closer to him. He watched her legs curl under her body, he watched her hands slowly release their grip on the sheets as she unconsciously turned towards the only other warm body in the room. His neck began to cramp, so he mimicked her movements and quietly flipped onto his side, so that he could see her better.

It was because he was watching her so closely, that he noticed when she began to sweat. Just a drop trailing down her temple, but thirty seconds later another one followed, and within a minute, her forehead was drenched. Kaz’s eyes flew to the open window, a cool breeze still cascading in. He thought of Inej, always wearing a jacket, teeth chattering when the temperature dropped slightly below sixty degrees. Cautiously, he moved to peel the thin bedsheet off of her, exposing her chest, which rose and fell with rapid, erratic breaths. And then her lip started to quiver. Just the bottom one.

“Inej?” He spoke quietly, wary of spooking her, but her only response was a slight whimper. Kaz didn’t think he’d ever heard her make that sound before. She was crying.

 _Does she have nightmares?_ Kaz wondered and then immediately chided himself. If anyone had reason to have nightmares, it was Inej.

For a moment, Kaz sat frozen in his own bed, watching the dark-haired girl squirm and whimper beside him. It was like watching a train wreck, so enamored and frightened by what he was seeing that he didn’t dare look away, not even for a second.

And then she swung. He caught her wrist with his hand without even realizing what was happening, his reflexes acting before his conscience could. His gloves were still on, but nevertheless, the warmth that seeped from her body into his own caught his breath in his throat. The involuntary force at which he pinned her arm back down on the bed only further upset the sleeping Inej, which Kaz probably could’ve foreseen, but just like her unconscious fight-or-flight response, his own instincts easily overpowered any logical train of thought. With her free hand, she swung at him again, this time barely missing and grazing his right temple before he could subdue her.

He was straddling her now, wrists pinned beneath his hands and her hips immobilized between his legs, which he realized, was probably not the most reassuring position for a person having a nightmare to wake up in. He tried her name again, but Inej, who had always been a light sleeper, didn’t seem to hear him.

Kaz began to panic, frightened by both the unrecognizable state of the girl beneath him and whatever joke Jesper would crack the next day about Inej screaming all night.

“Inej. Inej, come on, wake up.” Her hips bucked with such strength that is almost sent Kaz flying into the headboard. “It’s just me. You’re okay, I promise, it’s just me. It’s Kaz.” Nothing. “Inej, can you hear me?” Like he had finally guessed the right password after minutes of trying, her eyes shot open. Relived, he moved to slide off of her, the embarrassment only now dawning on him, when he made eye contact with her. But Inej did not see him. Her eyes, the vast, cosmic color of a crow’s wings, were empty, and looking at him in a way he hoped he never had been and never would be deserving of. Whatever Inej saw, it was not Kaz Brekker.

She had stopped fighting him, and her skin, which had been doused in sweat just moments ago, was now freezing to the touch. She made no movement, except for her lips, which were mouthing a phrase Kaz knew all too well.

He had seen her repeat it to herself hundreds of times. At the Ice Court in Djerholm, at the Church of Barter, even on that ship, as the life was literally gushing out of her, she had still managed to mouth those words as she slipped in and out of consciousness. And to his enjoyment, sometimes Kaz found her mouthing those words in his own office at some ungodly hour in the morning as they debated some trivial disagreement, Kaz pushing every button of hers he knew how to.

But he hadn’t needed hundreds of tries to figure out what it was she was saying. He had read her lips the first time he’d seen her, in the dark lobby of the Menagerie.

He climbed on top of her again, much more gently this time, hovering above her body so that she could feel his warmth but not his restraint. He wiped the damp hair out of her eyes and slowly took her head into his hands, taking care not to let the exposed skin on his wrists brush up against her neck, leaning in so close that he could smell the salt on her lips.

And he spoke, his lips mirroring her own pace, slow but steady.

“I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee . . . I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee . . . I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee,” Kaz repeated until color returned to her face and her breath slowed and Inej’s eyes finally saw what was right in front of her.

_His world was dark. Much too dark for 9 a.m. on a sunny Wednesday morning._

_“Kaz, oh Saints, fuck, Kaz, come on, look at me. Kaz, look at me, come on, please.” The voice was familiar, but he was much too distracted by what lay behind the figure to identify it._

_Stars. He had never really appreciated them. It stormed often in the Barrel, high winds and rain brought in by the churning seas. There was rarely a clear night, and when there was, Kaz found stargazing to be a futile use of his time. A small voice in the back of his mind reminded him that it was too late in the morning and too early in the day for stars to be visible, but their beauty was too extraordinary for him to pay it any mind._

_She always said he should look at the stars more. He thought of the way he used to think her midnight stakeouts on rooftops to be useless wastes of time, and he scolded his past self for being so pretentious, so uptight. It was only that, back then, he only had time for matters of real importance. If stars had always been this captivating, this all-consuming, then he would have spent a lot more time looking at them._

_The voice that had seemed so far away just moments ago, developed a very real, corporeal form when it grabbed Kaz beneath his arms, invoking a yell that he could feel, but not hear. The stars disappeared. What replaced them was a blinding pain only worsened by the grip of his unidentifiable assailant._

_He wished he could look at the stars, even if just for a second more._

_Kaz’s grab for the switchblade in his left jacket pocket must have been detectable, his movements slowed by his debilitated state, because the weapon was knocked out of his hand before it had even found its target._

_“Saints, Kaz, it’s me. Fuck off, I’m trying to save your life.” His assailant appeared to be friendly. Or was a friend. A thin line._

_He probably would’ve reached for his second switchblade if he hadn’t looked to his right and recognized the hand pulling him down the street. Dark skin, long fingers, bony knuckles, a black ring on the pointer finger—a gift from a special someone. Kaz knew that if he’d looked farther and pulled up the sleeve, on the arm attached to this hand there would be a tattoo depicting a crow drinking from a cup, the same tattoo Kaz had on his own forearm._

_“Jesper?”_

_“_ _No shit. Now please, just shut up and stay alive . . . Please.” The second please was much quieter, and Kaz did not think he was intended to hear it. But he did._

_The stars kept fading in and out of his sight, and each time Kaz wished to stay and look at them, Jesper yelled another insult at him, and the stars would vanish._

_“Kaz Brekker, I swear on the Saints, if you die, I will fucking kill you.” Kaz thought about how amusing, or appalling, this macabre situation must look to innocent bystanders—a boy dragging his dying friend through the streets like a ragdoll in broad daylight. But then again, it was Ketterdam. Folks had seen worse._

_While the stars were beautiful, as Jesper heaved his limp body down the streets of the East Stave, Kaz found that observing the watchful faces of people that passed them by was just as entertaining as watching the stars. Some assumed this was some form of advertisement for a_ Komedie Brute _show, even applauding their convincing performance, though what characters Jesper and Kaz were playing was unclear to him. Some even started to follow them, though they grew bored quickly. The smarter ones had the sense to duck into alleys or taverns and mind their own business._

_“Come on, Kaz, stay with me. We’re almost there, man, almost there . . . Though, if you suddenly rediscovered your ability to walk, we’d probably get there a little faster.” Kaz barely registered Jesper’s comment and he couldn’t find the strength to reply, much less get up and walk. The growing numbness in his right arm concerned him the most, though if Kaz was dying, he felt more inconvenienced than anything._

_Was he dying?_

_Jesper dragged his limp body across a familiar threshold and slammed the double wooden doors behind him, banishing the sunlight, which had been the only source of brightness in Kaz’s darkening world. He could only focus on things right in front of his face, and while the surroundings beyond that were nothing but blurry shapes and shadows, he still knew where he was._

_There were a few patrons still at the bar and a couple at the Blackjack tables towards the back of the lobby, likely trying to win back all that they had lost the night before._

_Jesper addressed them all. “Get the fuck out. Now.”_

_Kaz couldn’t imagine this was great for business, but the men did not seem phased and slowly made their way out of the Crow Club, more annoyed by this inconvenience than frightened. Once again, as was the nature of Ketterdam. Half of these customers had either shot someone or been shot themselves in a gambling hall just like this one._

_Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a bright-haired boy bounding down the staircase. “Jez, hey, how’d it—” the sight of Kaz’s bloody body on the wooden floor stopped Wylan in his tracks, his eyes growing wider than the moon. “Oh, Saints, w-what happened, Saints, Jez, what happened—”_

_“Help me get him on a table.” Jesper spoke with more authority than Kaz had ever seen him wield, and, even more surprisingly, didn’t even spare a second to properly greet his boyfriend._

_Wylan, whose hands had assembled and dismantled more tiny, intricate explosives than Kaz had ever seen in his life, did not seem to handle humans with the same delicacy, and a brush of his finger over the gaping hole in Kaz’s shoulder evoked another pained cry from him, this time causing such a spasm that Jesper all but dropped Kaz onto the nearest table._

_A few other Dregs members had followed Wylan down the staircase after hearing the commotion, and they now gathered silently in the lobby, shaken by the sight of their seemingly invincible leader bleeding out on a Blackjack table. The circular table was not quite long enough for Kaz’s body, and his legs hung awkwardly off one end._

_Jesper addressed the other members with that same unrecognizable authority, sending for water, whiskey, towels, and a surgical kit. If Kaz could speak, he would have request that anyone but Jesper handle that surgical kit._

_Again, Wylan tried to ask what had happened, but Jesper did not pay it any mind. “Nina. Is Nina still in town?”_

_Wylan fought to tear his eyes away from Kaz. “I . . . I don’t know. I saw her the last time you all did, a couple days ago.”_

_“Wylan, find her. I need you to find Nina.”_

_“But . . . I don’t know where she is Jez, I don’t even—”_

_“Wylan.” His voice was steady, and his composure seemed collected, but the hand that still rested on Kaz’s left knee was shaking. What he said next, Kaz would not remember in the morning, but he heard the words now, faint and drenched with desperation, just as he was. “Wylan, if we don’t have Nina he doesn’t stand a chance . . . Even with her, it’s not . . . it's not looking good.”_

_At this, Wylan only nodded and raced out the double doors._

_Someone handed Jesper a bottle of whiskey, which he first drained about half of himself, and then held it to Kaz’s lips, supporting his head with one hand and forcing him to_ _drink with the other, like a baby with a bottle._

_Around him the scene was unfolding in chaos, but the more panicked everyone seemed to become, the calmer Kaz felt. He reached for Jesper’s hand on his knee, and when he grasped it, Jesper almost flinched, taken aback by the gesture. Though his gloves were still on, normally Kaz too would be unsettled by the contact, but he no longer felt confined by such paranoiac boundaries._

_“Is she here?” Kaz’s voice was so quiet, that although the whole world was listening, only Jesper could hear him._

_He knew it was a Wednesday, but if any day were a good day for an exception, this would be it._

_Jesper’s face fell, but he did his best to hide his sorrow from his best friend, who he knew did not take well to sympathy or compassion. “No, she isn’t here. I’m sorry. But I’m sure she will be soon. Just . . . just stay with us and she’ll be here soon.”_

_Kaz witnessed the events that transpired over the next hour as a spectator, a third party observing the frenzy from outside his own body. He could not speak, could not move, could not open his eyes, but he heard and saw the same things that everyone else who was inside the Crow Club on that day did. Like the moments leading up to the gunshot and those directly following it, he would not remember this out-of-body experience in the morning, but for now, he was satisfied in knowing that if he was to die, he could look into his own eyes as he did._

_He floated down for the first time when Jesper applied pressure to the wound with a bundled up towel, the pain reaching him even from afar. It was like sailing down a staircase, except when he landed on the table, the face he looked up at was not that of Jesper._

_It was her._

_He wanted to reach out and touch her, tuck her stray hairs behind her ears, but his arms felt heavier than a ton of bricks._

_“Don’t move.” He heard the words inside of his own head, but her lips did not seem to move. She looked just as she had the last time he’d seen her: one braid down her back, a dark leather jacket draped over her shoulders, black jeans and boots. The cut under her eye even looked just as fresh as it had two months ago. Her touch was so light, so warm and gentle, that he could barely feel it, but it brought him a sense of relief just the same._

_“Am I dead?” He did not have to speak the words for her to hear them._

_“I hope not. For that would mean I am dead as well, no?”_

_Inside of his head, he laughed, though the back of his throat was filled with too much blood for a vibration to sound. “Sankta Inej.”_

_“Do not desecrate our Saints like that, Kaz,” she scolded, but a soft smile played across her lips._

_He did not know why she used the word “our”. Kaz only had one Saint, and she sat before him._

_Though it seemed like he spent days floating in and out of his body, he would later come to find out that it had only been about ten minutes. He wondered if this feeling of being infinitely trapped between two worlds was what Inej felt each time she sat on his windowsill._

_Kaz watched from the rafters as Nina Zenik burst through the doors, a shell-shocked Wylan following closely behind her._

_When Jesper saw her, he looked so relieved Kaz thought he might burst into tears. “Nina, thank the Saints—”  
_

_“You’re a lucky bastard, Wylan caught me at the harbor . . .” she trailed off as her eyes landed on Kaz._

_“I-I told you he was hurt,” Wylan whispered._

_“You didn’t say he was dying.” Nina took a deep breath and then put on her bravest face. “I need space.”_

_The other Dregs members scattered to corners of the lobby, leaving only Jesper and Wylan at Nina’s side. Her hands glided over the gaping hole in Kaz’s chest, surveying the damage and making mental notes of it, all while talking to Jesper._

_“What happened?”_

_Now that Kaz’s life was in someone else’s hands, Jesper felt the dam finally collapse within him, losing whatever control he had felt moments ago as the gravity of the situation flooded over him. His hands, stained with Kaz’s blood, pulled at the roots of his hair and wiped his runny nose, smearing more blood all over his face._

_“I . . . We were in the East Stave. We were supposed to go speak with the owner of this old gambling hall, Kaz wanted to buy it from him, we hadn’t . . . we hadn’t even made it inside the building, we were still on the street and Kaz just . . . he just dropped.” Jesper’s long legs carried him from one wall to the other within seconds as he paced back and forth, unphased by a flustered Wylan trying to calm him._

_“It’s clean, through and through. So that’s . . . good,” Nina muttered, mainly to herself._

_Wylan, always the optimist, pointed out that at least it hadn’t been near his heart._

_Jesper stopped in his tracks. “But Nina, I-I think it hit an artery. He lost . . . he lost a lot of blood,” he choked out, and then resumed his pacing, trying to shake off the haunting image of his friend’s blood marking a trail down the streets of Ketterdam, like Kaz was plotting his own funeral parade._

_“Who was it?”  
_

_“No idea. It wasn’t close range. Had to have been a sharpshooter.”_

_Nina tore her eyes away from Kaz for a moment. “Where were your spiders?”_

_Jesper’s jaw hardened. “I don’t know. I’ll fucking kill them.”_

_“If Kaz survives he’ll do it for you.”_

_Nina was trying her best, but she wasn’t a healer. In fact, nowadays she was more comfortable with the dead than the living. She leaned down to Kaz’s ear as her hands roamed over his body—he could almost feel her power in his bloodstream, directing clots and circulation._

_“I know you can hear me Kaz.” He could, but he could not respond. “I talked to her a few days ago. She wants to come see you next week. Do you understand? She wants to see you next week. And I know you wouldn’t dare disappoint, Kaz Brekker.”_

_She was right. He thought of the last time he had seen Inej. He hadn’t kissed her or touched her, he had not told her he loved her or even reminded her that he cared for her. Next time, he would not disappoint._

_He began to float down again, but this time, something was wrong. The speed at which he hit the table felt as if he had literally been dropped from the sky._

_Nina’s fingers reached for his neck, where she found no pulse._

_“He’s flatlining. Everyone out, NOW!”_

_And then everything went black._

_. . ._

_He woke up in his own bed, Jesper sitting on a chair next to him. When he realized that Kaz was awake, he sprang forward, jumping to embrace him, but he caught himself at the last moment. He settled for gently laying his hand over Kaz’s gloved fingers._

_Kaz had many things he wanted to say to Jesper, many apologies and many thank you’s, but he could only find the strength to ask one question._

_“Is she here?”_

_Jesper’s face fell and a pained look crossed his features, more disappointed than sympathetic. In that moment, Kaz regretted asking after Inej before even offering a greeting to the man that had saved his life._

_“No, she isn’t. But I’m sure she will be soon."_

_Kaz was not distressed by this news, for he knew of a way to see Inej no matter where she was. He closed his eyes and began to count her Saints._

_Santkt Petyr. Sankta Alina. Sankta Anastasia. Sankta Marya. Sankta Lizabeta. Sankt Vladimir._

_Sankta Lizabeta. On her belt. Rose-engraved handle. The blade was of average lethalness, but it was by far the loveliest. Lizabeta, from Elizaveta, meaning God is my oath. Saint of devotion, of worship. Saint of fidelity. “I will never leave thee nor forsake thee.”_

He didn’t know why he’d taken off his gloves. It’d just felt right.

He held her carefully, running his hands up and down her sleeved arms, but avoiding any exposed skin. Their legs were intertwined beneath the sheets and he pulled her tighter against his chest, her shoulder blades pressed against his sternum. The ghost of his bullet wound ached, even after a full two months, but the gratification that rushed through him at the feeling of her body against his own was stronger than any pain. If it had been anyone else, the position would have felt awkward, and he was worried he wasn’t doing it—whatever _it_ was—right. He had never held anyone like this, nor did he think he had ever been held like this, not even as a child.

But her breathing had calmed, and she was no longer overheating or cold to the touch, just a perfect, warm temperature right in between.

They didn’t speak, but after a few minutes, Inej breathed out a sigh, the most beautiful sound Kaz had ever heard, and he let go of a breath he didn’t know he had been holding, as if he’d been afraid she would eventually come to her senses and push him off in disgust.

Kaz knew that she didn’t want to talk about the nightmare, because if he had been in her position, he wouldn’t have wanted to either. The best he could do was make sure that she knew she was safe. That as long as Kaz was alive, no one would ever hurt her again.

After about an hour, her breathing developed a slow, steady rhythm, but Kaz was not quite ready to join her in slumber. The panic he had felt at her own terror was still inside him, the adrenaline still coursing through his veins.

So he did the only thing he knew how, aching to fall asleep in this very spot, this close to her, touching her more intimately than he ever had before.

He counted her Saints.

_Santkt Petyr. Sankta Alina. Sankta Anastasia. Sankta Marya. Sankta Lizabeta. Sankt Vladimir._

_Sankt Vladimir. Tucked in her left boot. A last minute, emergency weapon. Saint of . . . royalty, maybe? And . . . and . . . fuck. What else?_

Kaz always forgot about Sankt Vladimir. He thinks he might have been a prince of some sort, but nothing was coming to mind. He had always meant to ask Inej about him.

But sleep was already overtaking him, creeping up from his toes and weighing heavy on his eyelids.

He would ask her in the morning.

. . .

When he awoke, stiff but well rested, he shielded his eyes from the burning daylight streaming in through his windows, blindly reaching for the girl next to him.

But his hands came up empty.

In her place was nothing, not even an indentation in the mattress or a wrinkle in the sheets to prove that she had been there. The window was wide open, noise from the streets below and a cool breeze drifting in.

She sailed out on a Tuesday. She always did.

_Santkt Petyr. Sankta Alina. Sankta Anastasia. Sankta Marya. Sankta Lizabeta. Sankt Vladimir._

_Sankt Petyr. Saint of reassurance. Saint of the unchanging. Of sunsets and sunrises and death and life. Balance._ _Consistency._ _“For dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.”_


End file.
